Porch

If you have been following this blog you will know that for the last 18 months or so we've been having various elements of our house rebuilt. This is the final major component. From each gatepost here, running across the garden to the opposite wall there are two beams, the one to the north is higher that the one to the south. Between the beams we have photovoltaic panels that form the roof to keep the rain out and to generate electricity.

At this end over the gate the planners insisted on a kind of porch over the gate to block the view to the panels from the street. Apparently it's typical here, but if you look at most gates, there is normally nothing over the top or if there is something, it's usually more stones... As you can see the carpenter has been creating a form that will create a small section of pitched roof which goes over the porch and will have slates installed on it to keep the weather out. The rear of the porch and the 30 cm or so of roof that doesn't have PV panels on it will be a section of zinc which is pretty common here.

If you look carefully to the right you can see the metal bracket which will hold the zinc guttering in place, so we can collect the water from the solar panels to put into water butts for the garden. We weren't allowed to have cheap plastic gutters but required to have the much more expensive zinc ones, even though you can't actually see them from anywhere but the garden, and we're only installing them so we can collect the water for the garden...

A cold but bright day - which is the best for PV panels as they don't like the heat.